As a kid, one of the most satisfying things to do was to dump out all your action figures onto the floor and make them fight, regardless of size, brand or complicated copyright laws. In this imaginative space, Robert Patrick’s T-1000 could punch a Thundercat through a concrete wall. and no movie executives would show up, tsk-tsking and wagging a finger. Real life is a lot more complicated, but that seemed to be the mindset of director D.J. Caruso when he originally pitched a movie that would have seen the G.I. Joes meeting up with the Transformers.

While Michael Bay’s “Transformers” series has been doing gangbusters at the box office, Hasbro’s other toy line-turned movie franchise, “G.I. Joe,” has been met with a more tepid response. Thus, the rumored third film has floundered in development hell for quite some time. According to an interview with Collider at a screening for the director's latest film, Caruso was tapped to direct the third “G.I. Joe” movie back in 2015. Instead, he went on to direct "xXx: The Return of Xander Cage," but details on Caruso’s ideas for “G.I. Joe 3” -- and the meeting of two Hasbro brands -- are intriguing.

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If the G.I. Joes meeting Transformers sounds like something you’d like to see, though, hold your Dinobots. You’ll probably have to rip the latter franchise from Michael Bay’s hands first.

“They’re not ready to do [G.I. Joe meets Transformers] yet," Caruso explained. "That’s exactly what they should do but they’re not ready to do that because in fact the script that I was developing, the two worlds sort of collided at the end and when they read it they were like, ‘We’re not ready to do this yet.’… They will eventually collide those two worlds and it’s probably when Mr. Bay decides he’s done with Transformers.”

Don’t lose hope just yet, though. Paramount -- the production company for both the “G.I. Joe” and the “Transformers” series -- has been tapping writers to develop a larger cinematic universe, which is all the rage in the film industry these days, especially considering the success enjoyed by Marvel’s superheroes universe. The meeting of Snake Eyes and Bumblebee was almost a sure thing, but has been put on hold.

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“It came close but I think what the studio was trying to do was reassess it and so now they’re back to the drawing board, and we’ll be talking again about it. It’s a valuable franchise—[it’s] not that they didn’t get it right, they just wanna really get it right and see if they can push it to the next level,” Caruso said.

“xXx: The Return of Xander Cage” is directed by D.J. Caruso and stars Vin Diesel, Donnie Yen and Deepika Padukone. The film debuts in theaters January 20, 2017